Kids Talk: Strategic Language Use in Later Childhood

Kids Talk: Strategic Language Use in Later Childhood

Synopsis

This collection of essays offers a cross-disciplinary perspective on the skilful and varied ways in which young people of different ages, classes and ethnicities construct their world through language.

Excerpt

Sociolinguistics is the study of language in use. With a special focus on the relationships between language and society, sociolinguists analyze the forms and functions of language across social groups and across the range of situations in which speakers and writers deploy their verbal repertoires. In short, sociolinguistics examines discourse as it is constructed and co-constructed in the interactions of everyday life and as it reflects and creates the social realities of that life.

Some professional linguists examine the structure of sentences independent of who is speaking or writing and to whom, independent of what precedes and what follows, independent of the situated discourse in which linguistic form takes shape. By contrast, sociolinguists and discourse analysts investigate linguistic expression embedded in its social and situational contexts. Among observers who are not professional linguists, interest likewise focuses on language in discourse--for it is discourse that mirrors the patterns of social structure and strategic enterprise that engage the attention of most language observers.

Oxford Studies in Sociolinguistics offers a platform for studies of language use in communities worldwide. We invite synchronic or diachronic treatments of social dialects and registers, of oral, written, or signed discourse. We welcome studies that are descriptive or theoretical, interpretive or analytical. As with Kids Talk, some series volumes report original research, but an occasional one synthesizes or interprets existing knowledge. The series aims for a style that is accessible beyond linguists to other humanists and social scientists, and some volumes may appeal to educated readers keenly interested in the language of human affairs--for example, the discourse of lawyers engaging clients and one another with specialist registers or of patients engaging physicians over the challenges of treating disease and maintaining or regaining health or of kids talking to those around them about their academic . . .